


Who's There?

by IntelligentAirhead



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Gen, Multiple Timelines, Toriel and Frisk are mentioned but not really active participants in the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5049745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntelligentAirhead/pseuds/IntelligentAirhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sans has seen what happens every time the human has walked out of the ruins, and he knows by now that he can't predict the results.<br/>He just never considered that choosing not to leave was always an option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who's There?

It’s the simple things in life, Sans thinks, that really make it all worth it. He may be tired down to his bones— and if there is a day that joke ever gets old, he never wants to see it— and there are days, weeks, months, where he’ll want nothing more than to just bury himself in a snowdrift and never come out, but there’s something about the fact that the snow is still existing, something inherently hopeful about it, that keeps him going. He can live through the same day one thousand times so long as he’s assured of his ability to leave a different trail in the snow each go around.

It might be the baffling fact that there’s any snow at all down in the Underground. Anything that determined to stick around when it shouldn’t even exist is worthy of respect.

It’s a lot like any other thing in the Underground, Sans muses. It shouldn’t persist, but hey, there it is.

Simple things are like that, and they’re all the more reliable for it. The bigger things, the important things, are sometimes best reduced down. After all, staking your life on an idea is a lot easier when you reduce it down to cold powder.  Anything more complex complicates things with stuff like conversation, and opinions, and actions and—

“Sans! I will be walking the perimeter and recalibrating the puzzles!” Papyrus clasps his humeri, adjusting the way he stands just so that the wind catches his scarf and sets it billowing behind him.

Sans grins just a bit wider than usual. His brother is always so certain of how much everything he does matters. It’s always fantastic to witness. “Nice. Take your time; I can probably squeeze a nap in.”

“Sans!” Papyrus narrows his eyes. “You think I can’t see through your plans! You are telling me you will take a nap so that I will think you are napping at your station, but then...! Oh, but then you will actually wander off, and take a nap elsewhere!”

“You caught me. I was going to go outside my _radius_ ,” Sans says, tapping his arm.

Papyrus groans. “Just be alert in case a human comes! Can you just not be lazy for once in your life?”

“Ah, you know me,” Sans says, as a knife flashes in his mind’s eye, “I love doing absolutely nothing.” After all, if he has to do anything, then it’s already too late.

Papyrus groans and storms off.

Sans stares after him, thinking how lucky he is that his brother is alive. Then, he turns his back and walks towards the door that has the ability to change that.

 

* * *

The walk is no longer than usual. Sans never takes shortcuts here, not on this journey. He is in no rush to see whether the human will shamble out, coated in dust, or wander this way and that, peering at the trees with curious eyes. What will be, will be. He has promised that much.

He doesn’t break promises until absolutely necessary.

So he walks. He trudges in the snow, and he sits back and waves at Lesser Dog— tells them not to worry about their snowmen because ‘snow one really snows where to start’, and that they’re doing some ‘ice work’— and he walks all the way down the path to the ruins.

And then he stops.

And then everything stops.

And he thinks this must be a mistake because he remembers glimpses and emotions and ideas and faces and snippets of conversation, but never once has he remembered seeing the way the door bulges inwards, cracks splintering the hewn rock. Never once has he seen the pile of broken stone, and the way the snow is discolored and dirty from the dust and rubble. Never once has he caught his breath and wondered if there is dust that was once living, that once told bad jokes through a door, scattered amongst the debris.

There’s a first time for everything, though.

Sans stares. It’s all he can do, for a moment. Then, a thought hits. This is the one opportunity he has, he thinks, to do absolutely nothing.

“You didn’t even need my help,” he says to the door, and it’s hollow, and broken, and wrong-sounding, and Sans shuts his mouth because of course it would always have been easier to ensure that no one had a chance of being hurt, rather than run the risk, and he should be happy. He should be overjoyed because the system has been cheated. Everyone is safe.

He’s sitting on the ground, and he has no idea how he got there. He’s reaching out to the broken, irreparable door that likely has three tons of rubble blocking the other side.

He’s knocking, and the sound is nothing like he’s used to. It doesn’t ring out or echo. instead there is only a dull kind of thud.

“Knock, knock,” he says.

She’d probably say _‘who is there?’_ She always does.

“Boo,” he says.

Her voice is always expectant, almost excited at this part. It’s like she’s never heard a joke before, never really told one, each time. _‘Boo, who?’_

“Hey,” Sans says, withdrawing his hands and pressing them to his skull. “No need to cry. It’s just a joke.”

No one laughs, of course, because there's no audience. There's just him and the broken door.

He thinks, for a second, that he hears scuffling on the other side . He thinks, for a moment, that he isn't as alone as he first guessed.

But no one comes.


End file.
